Tag Archives: composing

In the first post of this Songwriting 101 series, we discussed the four main approaches to writing a song: melody, harmony, rhythm, and lyrics. Now that you’ve got a handle on those, it’s time to tackle the basics of structure, arrangement, and dynamics so that you can start applying them to your songwriting.

Virtually all songwriters would love to be able to support themselves financially through songwriting, but it can be difficult to find a stable career in music. It’s not impossible to achieve, though! The career paths below all have some aspect of songwriting involved in them and will still help you pay the bills. Check them out and see if something piques your interest!

Many of us in the creative world are under the false and dangerous assumption that creativity begins when inspiration strikes. Sure, you may occasionally wake up in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea that just popped into your head, but more often than not, creativity is something we encourage through discipline and hard work rather than something that strikes like lightning. So if you feel like you have a case of songwriter’s or composer’s block, instead of waiting for inspiration to strike, use some of these exercises to stimulate your creativity.

I get a lot of questions about how I became a jingle writer and how it’s possible to have a career as a songwriter and a career as a composer. Everyone who writes for ads has a different story of how he or she landed into the world of writing a 30-second film score. Here’s mine.